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The Islamic
State (ISIS) has claimed responsibility for the deadly gunman attack on Sunday, 1st October 2017 in Las Vegas, U.S.A through their media outlet
Amaq., with no supporting evidence, that
the perpetrator (whom they referred
to not by Paddock’s actual name, but his alleged Islamic name, “Abu Abd
al-Bar al-Ameriki”) was acting on behalf of their interests.
The claim — which the FBI believes
has no merit — is an odd one for Amaq, which until recently has not
been known for making false claims related to Islamic State-linked
terror attacks. An NPR story from May 2017 had this to say about ISIS and Amaq’s claims of responsibility:
ISIS, which sees itself as a state, has its own news
outlet — Amaq News Agency. It “purports to be independent” but is
actually an ISIS propaganda arm, said Thomas Joscelyn, senior editor of
the counterterrorism publication The Long War Journal. […] Reporters can
be fairly confident the claims come from ISIS, because the extremist
group has been very conscious of controlling and spreading its message.
“We have not been able to find a real lie from ISIS,” said
[Rita Katz, the director of the SITE Intelligence Group], who follows
the group’s social media obsessively with a critical eye. “Despite the
fact that they are a terrorist organization, they want to provide their
followers and supporters with authentic information.”
Joscelyn said he can’t think of an example of an outright
false claim by ISIS in the U.S. and western Europe. There are plenty of
exaggerations — on death tolls, for instance — and the statements
shouldn’t be assumed to be true.
The idea that the Islamic State simply scans the news in search of mass killings, then sends out press releases in hope of stealing glory, is false. Amaq may learn details of the attacks from mainstream media — and often gets those details wrong, also like mainstream media — but its claim of credit typically flows from an Amaq-specific source.
However, the Las Vegas claim of responsibility appears to
be completely without basis. Two senior U.S. government officials told Reuters that
Paddock’s name was not on any database of suspected terrorists. Aaron
Rouse, special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s
field office in Las Vegas, told reporters that the FBI “have determined to this point no connection with any international terror group.”
Some terrorism experts have noted that since June 2017,
there appears to have been in uptick in demonstrably false claims
stemming from Amaq. In a Twitter thread
posted on 2 October 2017, CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank
pointed to two previous claims made by ISIS since June 2017 that turned
have turned out to be completely false:
1. ISIS in recent months has made a number of demonstrably
false claims for attacks and incidents that had no jihadi terror nexus.
2. Exhibit A of a false ISIS claim was their claim for attack on Manila, Philippines casino resort in June. Perpetrator was indebted gambler.
3. Exhibit B of a false ISIS claim was their claim to have smuggled explosives into [Charles De Gaulle] airport in Paris last month.
4. In actual fact the [Charles De Gaulle] security alert was caused by verbal threats by an angry female passenger in her 50s not allowed onto flight.
5. Conclusion: ISIS, desperate for attention, will claim
just about anything these days knowing their supporters won’t believe
govt/media.
Speaking to the Press,
Colin Clarke, a Pittsburgh-based political scientist and terrorism
expert for Rand Corporation, concurred with Cruickshank’s purported
motive — that the Islamic State, suffering heavy territorial losses, has
a lot in common with every garden-variety Internet troll:
"It seems like they’re desperate for attention and will claim just about everything […]. They’ve lost so much territory, and they fear they’re becoming irrelevant." the expert stated unequivocally.
In that same report, Jasmine El-Gamal, a Beirut-based
senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, similarly tied IS’s increased
need for Internet recognition to their territorial losses:
We’ve seen them over the last year, as they start to lose territory, in Raqqa and Mosul, turn more and more towards internet radicalization, trying to claim credit for lone-wolf attacks.
A number of outlets have speculated that the reason for
the rapid claim of responsibility stems from the fact that the Islamic
State reportedly called for lone wolf attacks against Las Vegas — a
discovery found on a propaganda video first reported in May 2017 that superficially suggests a link. Despite this claim,
there remains no evidence that Paddock had any connection to IS or any
other terrorist group.
Scripted by: Rostrum
Contact:- +234-8028608056, rostrummedia@gmail.com
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